The estimated age of entry into child prostitution is 12 years old, while girls as young as 9 years old have been known to be recruited for prostitution. (FBI Audit Report 09-08) Most of these girls were recruited or coerced
into prostitution. Others were "traditional wives" without job skills who
escaped from or were abandoned by abusive husbands and went into prostitution
to support themselves and their children. (Denise Gamache and Evelina Giobbe,
Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation, National Coalition against
Domestic Violence, 1990)

Estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65% to
90%. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual
Report in 1991 stated that: 85% of prostitute/clients reported history of
sexual abuse in childhood; 70% reported incest. The higher percentages (80%-90%)
of reports of incest and childhood sexual assaults of prostitutes come from
anecdotal reports and from clinicians working with prostitutes (interviews
with Nevada psychologists cited by Patricia Murphy, Making the Connections:
women, work, and abuse, 1993, Paul M. Deutsch Press, Orlando, Florida; see
also Rita Belton, "Prostitution as Traumatic Reenactment," 1992, International
Society for Traumatic Stress Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA M.H. Silbert
and A.M. Pines, 1982, "Victimization of street prostitutes," Victimology:
An International Journal, 7: 122-133; C. Bagley and L Young, 1987, "Juvenile
Prostitution and child sexual abuse: a controlled study," Canadian Journal
of Community Mental Health, Vol 6: 5-26.)

80% of prostitution survivors at the WHISPER Oral History Project reported
that their customers showed them pornography to illustrate the kinds of
sexual activities in which they wanted to engage. 52% of the women stated
that pornography played a significant role in teaching them what was expected
of them as prostitutes. 30% reported that their pimps regularly exposed
them to pornography in order to indoctrinate them into an acceptance of
the practices depicted. (A facilitator's guide to Prostitution: a matter
of violence against women, 1990, WHISPER - Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution
Engaged in Revolt Minneapolis, MN)

"About 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. It's
hard to talk about this because..the experience of prostitution is just
like rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per
year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet.
" (Susan Kay Hunter and K.C. Reed, July, 1990 "Taking the side of bought
and sold rape," speech at National Coalition against Sexual Assault, Washington,
D.C. ) Other studies report 68% to 70% of women in prostitution being raped
(M Silbert, "Compounding factors in the rape of street prostitutes," in
A.W. Burgess, ed., Rape and Sexual Assault II, Garland Publishing, 1988;
Melissa Farley and Howard Barkan, "Prostitution, Violence, and Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder," 1998, Women & Health.)

78% of 55 women who sought help from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives
in 1991 reported being raped an average of 16 times a year by pimps, and
were raped 33 times a year by johns. (Susan Kay Hunter, Council for Prostitution
Alternatives Annual Report, 1991, Portland, Oregon) 85% of prostitutes are
raped by pimps. (Council on Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, 1994)

Prostitution is an act of violence against women which is intrinsically
traumatizing. In a study of 475 people in prostitution (including women,
men, and the transgendered) from five countries (South Africa, Thailand,
Turkey, USA, and Zambia):

A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and
women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national
average. ( Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, Pornography
and Prostitution in Canada 350.) In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution
had attempted suicide. Prostituted women comprised 15% of all completed
suicides reported by hospitals. (Letter from Susan Kay Hunter, Council for
Prostitution Alternatives, Jan 6, 1993, cited by Phyllis Chesler in "A Woman's
Right to Self-Defense: the case of Aileen Carol Wuornos," in Patriarchy:
Notes of an Expert Witness, 1994, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine.)

---------------------------------------------------------------
These facts are excerpted with permission from the Prostitution Fact Sheet,
compiled by Melissa Farley, at the Prostitution Research & Education site,
www.prostitutionresearch.com

"In
about 85 percent of
cases, sexual assaults
occur between people
who know each other."Source: Diana Russell,
The Prevalence and Incidence of
Forcible Rape and Attempted Rape of Females, Victimology: An International
Journal 7, 1-4 (1983).